The Numbers Game

Final week for most leagues. It’s that one time of the fantasy season when it doesn’t matter who you’d drop (unless it’s a keeper/dynasty), ‘coz if you’re still managing your team, then it must be playing for something.

In my opinion, the moves available this week is very limited unless one of your top guys encounter an injury or team setup is where you have 2+ guys playing for the teams not playing on Friday and/or Sunday. This is because there are 11 games that will be played on those days. So really if you haven’t streamed on Thurs, you really probably want to load up for Saturday’s slate especially if the players’ last game for the week is Friday or Saturday (MIN, LAC, DET, ORL, POR, SAC).

So for today, I’ll only focus on Saturday’s games. Tad anti climactic being the final edition of this series for this fantasy season.

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Nope, not talking about baseball here. Hopefully most of the us reading this advanced into the 2nd round of the fantasy playoffs. As for me, I got knocked out in the JB vs. Slim Razzball Year 3 League. I was somewhat disappointed, but with no KD and a combination of missed and sub par games from Poison Goose it was inevitable. No excuses, all part of the game. I’m in the midst of trying to advance in JB’s ‘Secret Attack’ RCL League so hopefully I can advance…at the expense of Mr. JB himself.

Planning for the remaining games this week is tricky and I think the margin of error is slimmer – not just in terms of what’s at stake, but due to the scheduling. Friday and Sunday are slated to have 10 games each. Now, if you wait until Saturday before making any moves, your team might not even make use of it due to the number of teams playing on Sunday. So you really have to look at your Friday-Sunday rosters and see if it makes sense to wait before adding for Sunday’s games.

Players on teams playing on Saturday should be a target as there are only 5 games being played.

WAS/MIN/CLE are the only teams that play on Fri. & Sat.

POR/LAC are the only teams that play on Sat. & Sun.

You see what I’m getting at here? You need to be really clever about your moves trying to shore up or catch up on some cats you’d need to advance to the next round.

For anyone who is in their early 30s (or older), this song would be familiar. Sadly, I’m giving away my age. Slim is totally not gonna be drafting me if I was a professional NBA player.

In any case, it’s the 1st week of the playoffs and where it’s either you make it to the next round, or it’s sayonara until next season. Going into the weekend, it could be do or die… as is the case for most of my teams in Razzball leagues where I hobbled into the playoff spot without Kevin Durant. So if you’re finding yourself in the similar situation of trying to get through via the band aid solution, these ideas below might help.

Fantasy playoff time is just a mere few days away. Whether it’s playing for that final playoff spot, playoff positioning or just like me in one of my leagues—playing spoiler, the next few days could end up being very pivotal. I will not show the opponent ranking grid for this article as it hasn’t really changed much for the last few weeks. If you’ve been reading the posts here, it’s basically a big fantasy opportunity to face teams like the LAL and BKN. If you’re looking for PG stats, ATL, DEN and CHA are teams to target. PHO, PHI and ORL are the teams to face if you’re looking for big man stats although you’d have to be specific as to which big man stat you’re looking for for each of those teams’ opponent.

Not a Shia LaBeouf, fan so I’ve never even heard about this movie ’til now. Well, what a difference a week makes. We were analyzing trade impacts last week. This week, we’ll be looking at a few major injuries that has hit some top tier fantasy players. Kyle Lowry, Kevin Durant, & Joel Embiid. And due to Embiid being gone for the season, no more EmBIIIIID for him.

… A Long Ass post trade deadline analysis (couldn’t come up with a word that rhymes with automobiles). I’ll dive deep into a couple of trades (Boogie and Nerlens Noel). I’ll also cover the much hyped but somewhat boring (thanks to Boston, Indiana & Chicago!) trade deadline that has come and gone.

Oh and by the way, if you’d rather just listen to an analysis instead of read and see some copy/pasted stats from NBA.COM, just go ahead and listen to JB’s podcast.

With this being the NBA All-Star Weekend, our typical weekend streamer options post will take a backseat to some fantasy implications of any trades that have (and will) occur with the trade deadline coming next week. There’s been a couple of trades that already happened. I was hoping to get a glimpse on all of them but looks like the players involved in the ORL-TOR trade didn’t suit up for their new teams.

I said fantasy implications, but let me just add to the growing voices that are asking the Magic management-WTF?! You trade Victor Oladipo, a near solid (at the very least pretty darn serviceable) stretch 4 in Ersan Ilyasova, the #11 pick (Domantas Sabonis) for Serge Ibaka which you in turn trade for Terrence Ross and TOR’s 1st round pick which is probably no earlier than the 20th pick. It doesn’t take a math genius to figure out that ORL traded away all those essentially for Ross and that 1st round pick. No disrespect to Ross but seriously?! </rant>

So, with both Ibaka and Ross not playing last night, we can only speculate as to see how they could initially be utilized in their respective teams.

Let’s start with Ross: I think he will end up being the starting SF. The way I see it the starting lineup will be this:

The NBA All-Star Game is 2 weekends away, but this is usually the time when certain fantasy basketball teams start to face key decisions that could determine if they make the playoffs or not. Moves via the waiver wire and choosing which players to play during jam packed nights become magnified. OK OK, that makes it sound like it’s THAT serious. Well, for some highly competitive leagues or very competitive managers, that may apply. This should be short and sweet. Stream against BKN + LAL if you’re looking for overall production, ATL + CHA for production from the guard position and PHI + POR for production from the big men.

A number of injuries to key players (at least fantasy wise) are starting to crop up again. Hassan Whiteside is questionable for Friday vs CHI. Deron Williams is the same for tonight’s game (2nd half of a b2b game) vs OKC. Anthony Davis is showing how his body is truly made of glass and it seems like if he’s not a DNP, he’s missing quarters due to injuries. It appears like he re-aggravated that thigh bruise and he could be shut for a game or 2 to give it time to completely heal. Al Horford, although listed as probable for tomorrow’s game vs ORL, seems to have some groin issues.

If any of these guys miss a game or two to end the week, it could open up some playing time for back ups and/or opposing players to produce above their averages.

We’re about 2/3 the way into the fantasy basketball regular season, but in the midst of the holidays and breaking down the per position opportunities, I wasn’t able to present the overall opposing ease rankings. Hopefully, most of you reading this are doing alright, or at least within striking distance of the few remaining playoff spots in your leagues. There’s still plenty of games to be played, for coaches (ahem, Earl Watson and Vogel to name a few) to mess up, and injuries to pop up (Chris Paul). For those who are clinging onto some borderline standard league players due to their name, this is usually the time of the year when you have to make decisions on whether holding such players become an obstacle for your team to make the playoffs or end up being anchor(s) to your team that could have your team lose a playoff spot you’ve held for most of the season. By looking at the matchup rankings, you can look to increase the number of slots to stream if your team needs some help in the standings.